Yesterday, Charlotte bugged me nonstop about doing "Day 2".
I think she enjoyed the first day of our unit, which is awesome :)
However, I know that brain input takes awhile to fully download at this age, and giving at least one day between any big "lesson" is important to me to be sure we are not only talking about ideas and doing fun crafts, but the girls are retaining information about God's creation of the world!
Reminder: Many ideas came from this blog:
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| They colored while I read from Genesis about Day 2! |
The girls seemed to like the repetition of how the lesson went,
knowing to first color the number, then cut it, etc.
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| Adelyn LOVES to cut! |
They both colored a picture in their books for day 2, and Charlotte wrote the sentence "God made sky" while Adelyn and I worked on writing the number 2.
Adelyn just turned 3, so she is just beginning to figure out how to make her hand go where she wants it to. We used a big whiteboard to "RAINBOW" the number 2.
Rainbowing is a great teaching strategy for a ton of things (writing, word study/spelling, etc) and it fits Adelyn well right now since she is just learning to write. She is learning about the numbers 1-7 and recognizing numbers, matching them with amounts, etc. However, writing the numbers 1-7 is pretty difficult for this little one, so this helps!
The way rainbowing works is I write something in one color, then they trace over it again and again in different colors. Adelyn needed me to hold her hand a few times to get her muscles to remember the motion of a 2, but after a few times together, she did it on her own :)
One thing that is so important to me is independence, even with mistakes!
Kids need time to practice getting glue in the wrong places, cutting too far, coloring the wrong way, etc without us giving them direction!
Regardless of schooling or homeschooling, every parent can afford their kid(s) a ton of freedom at home. Allow them to cut for themselves, glue, arrange, etc. Let them color their tigers green and be as silly and creative as they want.
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| I held the paper, but Adelyn cut, glued, placed the 2 and colored all on her own! |
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| Charlotte's finished page. |
We did the 10-frames again with the number 2, asking many of the questions I asked yesterday.
One additional thing that Charlotte and I did was talk about if I put 1 square on the top row and one on the bottom row, we could write a number sentence to match that.
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| I wrote it, pointing to the squares, and she wanted to write it herself. |
I really didn't make a huge deal out of this, just wrote it and pointed.
Charlotte liked using "plus" and "equals" as she wrote them.
Adelyn had wandered off by this point, which was perfect :)
Probably the biggest hit of the day was our cloud writing!
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| Adelyn had to be convinced that it was ok to put her hands in the shaving cream :) |
I can still remember my 4th grade teacher letting us write with our fingers in shaving cream!
Kids LOVE this! Charlotte had done it before and it was still just as exciting.
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| We practiced writing the number 2 |
Charlotte is actually a pretty stellar writer for 4 (not that I'm biased) but the number 2 is actually a pretty difficult one. The motions are a little whacky, so it's probably one of the numerals that takes the most practice.
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| I used the same rainbow approach with Adelyn, writing the 2 and having her trace |
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| Charlotte even write the sentence from today's lesson! |
Charlotte instructed me to text that picture (above) to Granddaddy Andy, but I have a difficult time explaining to Charlotte that Granddaddy Andy doesn't text ;) so maybe Grandma could share that tidbit with him!
The most fun part of the final activity was the level of independence.
I traced waves for them, and Charlotte went to town cutting, glueing, etc.
Adelyn got a head start because I cut the waves for her
(curves are actually difficult and she had already cut the 2, so I gave her a pass)
Again, I let them go to town with the glue themselves, being sure to not open the glue very much so they couldn't squeeze out too much at once!
I didn't write it above, but we learned the song for Day 2 while they were coloring in their books, just like Day 1. Adelyn sings the Day 1 verse and Charlotte does Day 2.
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| Adelyn had to do her own writing after I did mine :) |
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| Charlotte told me she wanted to share with Dad, Mom & Adelyn :) |
As a side note, I'm using this video to support Adelyn learning her numbers 0-10.
Preschool Prep materials don't look super exciting to adults, but they use solid brain research and they are incredibly effective. I let the girls watch it later in the day and Charlotte was just as happy to watch it as Adelyn was :)
Earlier, I had thought we'd finish the day by going to the park and watching clouds because I thought that would be fitting, right?
Well, this morning when we started talking about God making clouds, Adelyn started talking about how Little Bear got to bounce on clouds and she wanted to bounce on clouds too!
Although Charlotte explained that Little Bear was only dreaming (the fact that Little Bear is a work of fiction didn't seem to matter), it got me thinking that maybe a trip to a local trampoline park would be a more fitting end to the day :)
So we finished our day by bouncing on the clouds!
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